it became so cliche into that final quarter of the year and you saw the market largely shrugged it off. >> brown: a butte is more picturesque than the cliff, but go ahead. yes. >> yes, indeed. so i feel that investors at least are not bothered about this. they see this as a game of chicken going up and down pennsylvania between the white house and congress. and much of this has been kicked down the road effectively for a couple of months. we do know that we have an unsustainable budget deficit situation but on the flip side you have economists like paul krugman out there saying do not worry about the budget deficit, this is not the time to be slashing public spending. as you saw, that actually helped push that economy into decline in the final quarter. that was a big variable in that. so this is a huge debate. but on balance what you're seeing is a lot of the unexpected has surprised the positive. you mentioned housing, housing is not just virtuous in that it helps homeowners and construction workers out there and material suppliers, it's also helping the banking sector which, after al